Barry Sabas said there was “something special” about the team he and Joe Mivshek coached to a state basketball championship as seventh-graders in 2003 and the title of an elite eighth-grade league in Denver the following year.

But they had no idea how special.

The team that played together from fourth through eighth grades included Klein, who lived in Loveland, Major League Soccer player Ryan Kawalok and five other boys who went on to play NCAA Division I sports on scholarships.

Klein, a senior quarterback at Kansas State, received the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award on Friday in Baltimore as the top quarterback in college football this season and is one of three finalists who will be in New York tonight for the presentation of the Heisman Trophy to the nation’s best college football player.

Kawulok just signed a contract for his second season playing Major League Soccer, Alex Kelly is playing his second Division I college sport as a starting right fielder and leading hitter on Saint Louis’ baseball team. Jay Darling played lacrosse at the U.S. Naval Academy and three others went on to play college basketball.

Klein threw for 2,490 yards and 15 touchdowns and ran for another 890 yards and 22 TDs this year while guiding K-State to a 11-1 record, Big 12 Conference title, No. 5 national ranking and a Bowl Championship Series berth against Oregon in the Jan. 5 Fiesta Bowl.

“It blows my mind just to see the success that he’s had,” Kelly said. “He was playing receiver at one point at K-State and now he’s a front-runner for the Heisman. It’s crazy to think about.”

Kelly spent a year on CSU’s football team, redshirting in 2008 while quarterbacking the scout team. He decided he’d rather play college baseball and spent two seasons at Garden City (Kan.) Community College, then transferred to Saint Louis, where he led a 41-18 Billikens team that advanced to the NCAA Tournament in batting average (.326), home runs (eight) and RBIs (41) as a junior last year.

(Page 2 of 3)

Kawulok just re-signed with the Portland Timbers after being drafted by the MLS team last spring as a defender and spending the 2012 season on the squad’s reserve team. He played in three exhibition matches with the top team.

Darling played in a handful of matches on the lacrosse team during his four years at the Naval Academy and now is an Ensign in the Navy and serving as an officer on a surface combat ship, according to a Navy spokesperson.

Cody Mivshek, Joe’s son, played in 12 games at Portland in 2009-10 before transferring to Claremont (Calif.) McKenna College, an NCAA Division III school. Cody Mivshek is the second-leading scorer for the Stags this year, averaging 11.4 points a game as a senior guard on the basketball team. He’ll graduate in May with a degree in economics and finance, he said Friday.

Trevor Noonan played basketball for one season apiece at Air Force and DU, where he started seven games in 2010-11. Noonan, who is completing his degree at DU, played in 25 games at Air Force and 25 more at DU and averaged 3.3 points a game in his college career.

Kaipo Sabas, Barry’s son, played basketball for two years at Laramie Community College in Wyoming, then transferred to CSU. He joined the Rams as a walk-on but earned a scholarship and started 17 games as a senior guard last year, averaging 4.3 points a game, for a CSU team that went 20-12 and played in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2003. He’ll graduate in May with a degree in liberal arts and a minor in business, he said.

The other two members of the team were Tyler Campos, who graduated from the University of Colorado and now works for CBS Sports in New York, and Darren Naugle, who is living in Greeley and working for an oil company, Joe Mivshek said.

The plan had been for all of the boys to play basketball together at Rocky Mountain High School. But after winning the league title in an elite eight-team league at the University of Denver as eighth-graders (Klein was named MVP of the league tournament), they began to go their separate ways.

(Page 3 of 3)

Noonan’s father, Jim, who had been teaching and coaching at Poudre High, was hired as the basketball coach at Legacy High in Broomfield, so Trevor went there and played. Cody Mivshek, worried about cracking the starting lineup at Rocky, heard there was a new school opening on the southeast side of town and became a four-year starter at Fossil Ridge. He’s still the school’s all-time leading scorer. Naugle also decided to attend Fossil Ridge. And Klein, who was home-schooled, figured with the team breaking up that he’d be better off playing sports closer to home at Loveland High.

It’s hard not to wonder what they might have done had they all played together instead of against one another in high school, said Barry Sabas, a longtime assistant coach at Rocky Mountain. All nine of the Junior Lobos remain close friends and still get together when they can. Cody Mivshek shared an apartment with Kawulok last summer in Portland, Ore., while working as an intern for Adidas. He also got tickets from Klein to a Kansas State-Texas football game last year in Austin, Texas, where Mivshek’s college team was playing later that night.

“We all made out pretty nicely,” Kaipo Sabas said. “It’s unbelievable how many of us played college sports and how we got into so many sports, too. … It’s just unbelievable how successful we were.”